Teacher prep focus turns to states

TEACHER PREPARATION FOCUS TURNS TO STATES: Now that the Obama administration has finalized its highly anticipated regulations governing teacher preparation, much of the focus in the coming months and years will be on how states respond. Under the rules, states are required to develop ratings systems for teacher preparation programs that utilize a range of measures, including the learning outcomes of students who receive instruction from program graduates.

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— The Obama administration touted that it gave states greater flexibility in creating the accountability system than was part of its original proposal. But just how states will go about drafting systems for judging teacher preparation programs remains an open question.

— Education Secretary John B. King Jr. said Wednesday that civil rights organizations and advocates for students should be "vigilant" in pushing states to improve teacher preparation programs under the new rules. He urged them “to be active in the state-level conversations about how these regulations are implemented.”

— “This will be a major priority of the next administration, because there will be unending questions about implementation,” such as whether a state’s approach to holding programs accountable is acceptable to the feds, said Terry Hartle, senior vice president of government relations and public affairs at the American Council on Education. “States are going to pay to implement this regulation. We don’t know how conservative states are going to respond to an unfunded mandate.”

— “It’s really too early to tell at this point” how the next administration will implement the regulation, said Mary Kusler, director of government relations at the National Education Association, which is critical of the rule. “We also theoretically have Higher Ed [Act] reauthorization happening, so I don’t think you can look at these regs in a vacuum from that conversation.”

— One issue that’s proven particularly contentious is how much the new requirements will cost states. The Obama administration initially estimated the rules would cost states collectively an average of $40 million each year over the next 10 years. The administration downgraded its estimate for the final rules to $27 million per year over the next decade, citing the flexibility it added for the discrepancy. But critics of the rule have noted that officials in California have said the rules will cost nearly $485 million in just one year. The department says that state estimate includes potential changes that aren’t directly required by the rules.

POTUS FOCUSES ON STEM: President Barack Obama travels to Pittsburgh today to host the White House Frontiers Conference — a national convening co-hosted by the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. The emphasis is on exploring the “future of innovation.” The conference will focus on building U.S. capacity in science, technology, and innovation, according to the White House.

— First Lady Michelle Obama will be at Southern New Hampshire University this afternoon for a Hillary Clinton campaign rally.

GOP LAWMAKER SEEKS PELL GRANT RESTORATION FOR ITT STUDENTS: Rep. Luke Messer (R-Ind.) is joining a push to get the Education Department to restore the Pell Grant eligibility of students who were affected by the sudden closure last month of ITT Tech. Messer this week sent a letter to Education Secretary John B. King Jr., urging the department to immediately reset the Pell grant benefits for students whose education was upended when the massive for-profit school shut down.

— Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) called for the same last week. Both Murray and Messer argue the Higher Education Act allows the department to help the students in this way, without the need for Congressional action.

— The Education Department has repeatedly said it lacks the legal authority to extend additional Pell Grant eligibility to students — and it has backed a bill in Congress that would explicitly change the law to give them that power.

NEW REPORT SPOTLIGHTS MINORITY SHORTAGE AT SELECTIVE SCHOOLS: Too few minority students are getting into the nation’s most selective research universities, the Center for American Progress argues in a new report out today. The report finds that nearly 200,000 more black and Latino students would be enrolled in selective schools if those schools enrolled them at the same rate as their white and Asian peers. “The doors to America’s top public colleges remain firmly closed to the vast majority of black and Latino undergraduate students,” the report says.

— Just 2.8 million of the 10 million undergraduate students at public colleges in the fall of 2014 were black or Latino. Those students are less likely to be enrolled in America’s elite public universities and more likely to attend less-selective four-year universities, community colleges or technical schools, the report found. “When blacks and Latinos are excluded from top colleges, the U.S. higher education system cannot serve as an engine for social mobility,” the report says.

— The problem is worst in the south. Elite colleges in North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas and Texas enroll 6 percent or less of the state’s black students. Those universities educate between 13 and 19 percent of the state’s overall students, however. In Texas, just 9 percent of Latino students attended top public universities, compared with the overall state figure of 13 percent. Because of Texas’s large Latino population, that translates to a gap of more than 13,000 students, the report says.

MARGARET SPELLINGS TO BE INAUGURATED AT UNC: Spellings, who served as Education Secretary during the George W. Bush administration, will officially take the oath of office and deliver an address during her inauguration today at the University of North Carolina. She became president of the 17-campus system on March 1. The ceremony begins at 10 a.m. Watch it here.

ICYMI: DELAWARE COLLEGE VIOLATED RIGHTS OF ACCUSED STUDENT: Wesley College officials violated Title IX by not giving students accused of sexual assault a chance to defend themselves, a federal investigation found. Delaware's oldest private college even expelled one student accused of assault just before he was set to graduate — but officials hadn't allowed him to defend himself, according to an inquiry by the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights. The office found that the student hadn't been interviewed during the school's investigation, wasn't given information about what he was accused of before his disciplinary hearing, and was not provided a full opportunity to present witnesses or evidence at his hearing.

— That student wasn't alone. The Office for Civil Rights found "several incidents" from 2013-2015 in which the college provided no evidence that accused students were ever interviewed before they were suspended — and those suspensions sometimes occurred on the same day they were accused. Under an agreement with the Education Department, Wesley College will re-investigate the allegations against the student who filed the federal complaint, as well as cases involving three other students. The school will also give the Office for Civil Rights copies of files on alleged sexual harassment or assault for the next two school years, as well as publish an anti-harassment statement and revise its Title IX grievance procedures, among other corrective actions.

REPORT ROLL CALL

— EducationNext is releasing today a series of nine papers about the future of the education reform movement. Check them out here.

MOVERS AND SHAKERS

— Karen White has been appointed deputy executive director of the National Education Association. She most recently served as NEA’s senior director of Enterprise Data and Information Strategy, and led a national project to build an enterprise data system among NEA’s state affiliates.

SYLLABUS

— Liberty University students protest their president’s association with Donald Trump: The Washington Post.

About The Author

Michael Stratford is an education reporter for POLITICO Pro. He most recently covered federal higher education policy and student loans at Inside Higher Ed, with previous bylines at The Associated Press, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine. Stratford grew up in Belmont, Mass. and graduated from Cornell University, where he was managing editor of The Cornell Daily Sun.